10 Sep 2023

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to try and phish other users for personal information and details

to try and phish other users for personal information and details
a correction there, they don’t “phish”, they just stalk. you could do that yourself. most people will be happy accepting random “friend” requests and sharing their personal crap everyday profusely. likely not those who are actually into crime, mind you, those will be usually be much more cautious and discrete, but that won’t stop the company from selling a load of irrelevant datapoints dressed with some meaningless but cool sounding analysis with some magical bullshit algorithms.
storm in a teacup, if you as

Wrong. Planning a crime is a crime.

Wrong. Planning a crime is a crime.
Only because that statute was written as such. A series of unrelated social media posts that, when run through some piece of software, somehow magically make a prediction about a human’s future likelihood to commit a crime (short of one of those posts actually admitting to planning a specific crime as you pointed out) is not a criminal act.

A series of unrelated social media posts that, when run through some piece of software, somehow magically make a prediction about a human’s future likelihood to commit a crime (short of one of those posts actually admitting to planning a specific crime as you pointed out) is not a criminal act.

A series of unrelated social media posts that, when run through some piece of software, somehow magically make a prediction about a human’s future likelihood to commit a crime (short of one of those posts actually admitting to planning a specific crime as you pointed out) is not a criminal act.
NYPD’s argument would be that those series of posts may suggest that individual is worth keeping an eye on. That argument isn’t entirely without merit if you view this dispassionately. How many mass shooters follow the same basic template? Disaffected loner, rants on social media, radicalization online, fetishization of weapons, etc. Nearly all of the mass shootings that come to my mind follow this script. Earlier detection means you have a sick individual committed for mental health treatment, rather
So it’s not quite the plot line of the movie Minority Report ?
“We are not going to arrest them for Precrime. We just want to keep an eye on them.”
Uh-Huh … Yeah right !
So its ok to watch certain people that they think might commit crimes, rather than just watch for specific crimes? Isn’t that selective enforcement?
How does it not end up being “this person says a lot of stuff that I don’t like, I’m going to find something to bust them on” ?
The NYPD does not care about reducing crime. They care about looking tough and reporting good numbers.

The NYPD does not care about reducing crime. They care about looking tough and reporting good numbers.

The NYPD does not care about reducing crime. They care about looking tough and reporting good numbers.
and apparently becoming more fascistic over time. And they wonder why people don’t trust them when crap like this leaks out time after time.
Indeed.
They’re using this for intelligence gathering. By the time something progresses to the point of a criminal investigation/prosecution they don’t need a third party to scrape your data from Meta, they hand Meta a subpoena/warrant and Meta turns everything over, including private messages and other things this third party outfit can’t see.
Not saying this is okay. NYPD has a shitty history of engaging in these sorts of gray area tactics to suppress civil rights activists, critics of the department, and other types that are not criminals. Conversely, NYC is a very high profile target for everyone from the mentally ill basket-case with manifesto to international terrorists, so they’d be derelict in their duty if they weren’t trying to be proactive about sniffing out threats to the city.
In this case, they are likely wasting a shitton of taxpayer money for little to no gain, along with the finite time of their officers, and they’re shitting all over privacy and civil rights to do it. It’s a fail no matter how you look at it. As a native New Yorker, it offends but does not surprise me. 🙁

Normally that kind of broad search requires a warrant

Normally that kind of broad search requires a warrant
It’s not a “search” if you voluntarily release the information to the world (or one of your moronic friends does it for you)
If the cops were trolling my private iCloud or Google photo library, looking for crimes, with or without warrant, I’d agree wholeheartedly with you. The term for that with warrant would be ‘fishing expedition’ and any lawyer worth their salt would get it tossed. The term without warrant would be ‘illegal’
Perhaps people who commit crimes, even if those crimes are justified and/or vi
This isn’t really analogous to sending a drone through your house. Everything you put on social media is at least somewhat public, to varying degrees based on the privacy settings of the post and its context, so a better analogy would be paying for a drone to fly by your house and read that sign you put on your front lawn. If you want to extend it to a post with some basic privacy settings (e.g., “friends only”), then the analogy would be sending a drone to fly over your house and read the sign in the bac
Not really a surprise…
Victims of their own arrogance. Yes. They could just ask independent experts and not simply assume they are so superior than they do not have to. Unfortunately, law enforcement draws people with very specific personality defects.
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How can you work when the system’s so crowded?

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